1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a paper-sheet recognition apparatus that recognizes paper sheets being transported by using an optical line sensor and a magnetic line sensor.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a paper-sheet recognition apparatus that transports paper sheets such as banknotes by using a transport mechanism and recognizes the paper sheets by using an optical sensor that emits and receives light such as visible light and infrared light. Furthermore, in recent years, an increasing number of paper sheets are printed with ink containing magnetic material or have embedded security threads containing magnetic patterns to prevent counterfeiting and the like, so that a paper-sheet recognition apparatus that recognizes paper sheets by using a magnetic sensor has also been proposed (see Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-64840).
The paper-sheet recognition apparatus using such a magnetic sensor employs templates in which information, such as typical magnetic distribution of paper sheets and determination conditions, is defined, and compares magnetic data acquired by the magnetic sensor with the templates.
However, because banknotes on a transport path may be inclined with respect to a transport direction (hereinafter, described as “skew”) or may be misaligned with respect to the center position of the transport path (hereinafter, described as “positional shift”) while the banknotes are transported, it is necessary to prepare templates as many as combinations of multiple patterns for skew and multiple patterns for positional sift.
However, when paper sheets are banknotes, the above-mentioned templates need to be prepared for respective banknote denominations and respective banknote transport directions, and, when the templates prepared taking the skew and the positional shift into consideration are also considered, the number of the templates becomes huge. Therefore, there is a problem in that memory capacity for storing the templates increases and labor for defining the large number of templates also increases. Furthermore, the templates prepared taking the skew and the positional shift into consideration have a problem in that it is difficult to specify an evaluation target area in a small range because of an influence of an error related to positions. Therefore, when the templates are defined in accordance with the resolution of a magnetic sensor, which is generally lower than the resolution of an optical sensor, more labor is particularly necessary for specifying an evaluation tarter area in a small range.
In view of the above, there is a growing demand for realizing a paper-sheet recognition method capable of reducing the number of magnetic templates and specifying an evaluation target area in a small range easily and precisely, and a paper-sheet recognition apparatus to which the paper-sheet recognition method is applied.